


In the (Borrowed) Family Way

by Albiona



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Babysitting, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Minivan, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 02:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albiona/pseuds/Albiona
Summary: After winning gold in the 2018 Olympics, Tessa and Scott go home to Ontario and agree to take care of some friends' kids for a week, leading to minivan confessions and exhausted late night snuggling.





	1. Scott

“Scott,” Tessa’s voice cuts into my annoyance. “I need you to focus.”

She reaches her hand out to me and I can’t help but take it. Like, really. My hand just took it. No intentional choice from me. But a lot of things have been like that with Tess lately.

“I’m working on it,” I tell her. “I’ll figure it out.”

She glances at me. Confident, but cautious. She believes me, but she wishes I was already there. I feel my soul rise up like some kind of tiger. No, my soul seems to say. I’ll do better now. 

I unbuckle my seatbelt and plunge into the back of the minivan, where I promptly bonk my head on the edge of Emma’s carseat. 

You’d think that, for a gold-medal Olympian, I’d be more in control of my own body. But my body wants Tess. I’ve been reaching for her, taking her hand, wanting to make her proud for 20 years. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. 

I crumple in the footspace and take a toddler’s shoe to the eye. I duck back down and Tess asks, “Are you okay?” 

“Yup,” I pop back up in the aisle between the bucket seats. “I’m good.” My voice sounds gravely, not in a sexy way, more like in a this-is-embarrassing way. In an I'm-blinking-back-tears way. In a do-toddler-shoes-have-steel-toes-in-them way.

Emma takes up singing the Paw Patrol theme song from her seat beside me.

I knee-crawl my way to Thomas in this carseat in the third row. Another kind of embarrassing.

“Hey, buddy,” I tell him. He doesn’t want to look at me. “I’m sorry I yelled. Can I take your shoe off and see if we can fix it?” 

Except his shoe isn’t on his foot. He’d been bucking against the straps of his seat so hard, I didn’t notice that he was simultaneously priising his right shoe off his foot.

“Right turn,” says Tess, and I brace myself against the window as she steers us off the main road. I look over my shoulder at the road and catch Tessa’s big mascaraed eyes in the mirror.

Purpose renewed, I ask Thomas, “Where’d it go?”

“Right turn,” Tess says again, steering us into the grocery store parking lot. 

I prop myself against Emma’s seat with my shoulder and search under the backseat with my fingers. I find broken gold fish crackers and those weird puff snacks and an empty bottle of wet wipes. My longest finger touches something sharp and sticky and I withdraw it with a hiss.

Tessa doesn’t say anything, but I can feel her eyes on the back of my head.

We’ll be parked in a minute and Thomas needs his shoe.

“Try beside the window,” says my partner.

“Huh?” I rear back on my heels, wiping my finger off on my jeans and looking at Thomas, who is still grumping his lower lip but now watching me.

“On the other side of his cup.”

I have to prop myself on top of Emma’s seat to see it, but there it is, in the crevice between speaker and carseat. He must have gotten good air to flick it there. 

How was she so good at this?

Thomas presents his socked foot to me and I quickly undo the shoe’s velcro, pulling the tongue forward as far as possible.

I try to twist it on and he shrieks. I take it away, take a breath, and I try again. “Nooooooooooo,” he wails, writhing against his straps again.

After a couple more tries and failed attempts at deciphering his dislike of his shoe, I tug at his sock, sliding it up as far as possible. 

Tessa pulls into a space and I fall into Emma’s seat. I ignore the muttered, “Sorry,” followed by her cheery, “We’re here!”

Emma increases her singing by at least two octaves as Tessa hops out and slides open the door.

She gets Emma out and into a blue grocery cart with spinning steering wheels while I made peace with Thomas’s sock. He starts worming out of his seat before I finish, so I have to clench my jaw to keep from complaining or snapping at him as I untangle him. But he opens his arms to me to pick him up, and he’s trusting and warm, so that’s something. 

He and Emma refuse to sit beside each other, so I have to push an entirely separate, empty cart to keep them from screaming. But then it isn’t as much fun by herself, so by the time we reach the apples, Emma yells “Stop, please” and barreling into the seat by Thomas before anyone has the chance to react, including the innocent shoppers caught between our carts.

Of course, the kids start fighting again immediately.

“We are never doing this again,” I say to Tess as I pull up beside her on a blessedly empty aisle near the yogurt. I stick my foot out to keep Emma from climbing out on that side. "Sit down, Emma." 

“We’ll get better at it,” Tessa says. I raise my eyebrows, and she smiles. “Okay. We are never doing this again.”

I push my cart ahead of her toward the diapers, but grin when she slides her hand across my waist as I pass.


	2. Tessa

I once saw on Supernanny that if a kid keeps getting up after you put them to bed, you should only tuck them back in and say goodnight twice. After that, no eye contact, no verbal communication. All business. Put them back into bed and leave, and they’ll stop getting the interaction they want so they’ll stop getting out of bed.

I’ve put this kid in bed seven times now. 

Seven is supposed to be a perfect number, and I’ll believe it if Emma will just stay in her stupid bed. 

After the fourth retuck, the second with no words or warmth, I stopped going back down to the main floor. I sat on the top of the stairs in the dark, pressing my head on the bannister, trying to squeeze out my headache, and holding my cold fingers to the back of my neck where there’s a knot just under my hairline. 

I need more water. I need to lay down and sleep.

But Emma is singing to herself again on the other side of the door, lilting and happy, and I want to take my left skate to whoever came up with this puppy cartoon and it’s stupid song. 

I sang along with her earlier but I’m about three hours and five retucks past amused. 

I’d almost give her my silver medal if it’d make her fall asleep. 

Checking my watch, I wonder if I should risk sneaking downstairs. Emma hasn’t gotten out of bed for almost six minutes, even if she is awake, and I’ve been up here almost forty. Scott came up to check on me thirty minutes ago but I waved him away and he hasn’t been back. I heard the sofa springs compress downstairs two retucks ago and nothing since then.

I know I volunteered to do this and literally waved off his help, but I’m really annoyed Scott’s asleep and I’m still sitting on this hard stair with a headache.

I wait another thirty seconds, as if to prove to myself that the unfairness of him sleeping isn’t why I’m going downstairs. But if I hear Emma get up again, he’s dealing with it. But if he has another yelling moment like in the car today, I’m having a yelling moment at him. 

Stepping on the very edges of the steps, where they’re least likely to squeak, I slink down the dark stairway and into the den. Though only lit by one lamp, I have to pause while my eyes adjust to the brightness. 

Scott has taken the cushions off the back of the couch and stacked them on the floor. He’s laying on his back on the far side, arm lying across the almost-half of the couch beside him. Like an invitation. Like he left that space for me.

My annoyance fizzles a little. I might be giving him too much credit, but I want to believe that he was waiting for me to come down when he fell asleep. 

I want to believe the best of him. The best is usually pretty true.

But seriously, you can’t yell at a kid just because they’re yelling. I know the inside of the van makes everything echo and it can get really overwhelming, but he needs a longer fuse than that.

I have no idea what state the kitchen is in, so I continue past the den, pray my feet don’t stick to the tile, and flip the switch over the sink. The counters are wiped off and the drain is full of dishes—Scott must have washed them during bath time. I take a glass from the top and fill it from the sink. After I’ve drained it and filled it again, I open all the cabinet doors. I have to poke around in all the cabinets three times before I find the drawer where the garlic masher thing probably goes. (What did Scott even use this for? We made cheese toasties.) 

I realize as I’m trying to shove a drawer closed with my hip, that I’m not trying to be quiet. I just want to get this done so I can go to sleep, and I don’t care if it wakes Scott up. The petty, passive aggressive part of me—which has definitely been growing since Ryan and Bee left yesterday afternoon—wants him to wake up and come in here and see how much I’m doing. How I’m still working even though I’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting today: breakfast and laundry and bath time and all Emma’s retucks. Plus I chased Thomas around the yard like a chipmunk for seriously a complete hour, and Scott just sat inside with Emma making funny animal sounds.

Because I know this is passive aggressive, though, and petty, and not good for either of us, I sit on a stool and drink more water while threading the knives into the block. Then I name everything Scott’s done today. Like wash the day’s dishes. Wipe the counters. Help me shop. Make peace with Thomas in the minivan. Make lunch and most of dinner. Fill the minivan’s tank. Leave a spot for me beside him. 

When I click off the light, I go to him, and once I’m in the room all my frustration seeps into the carpet. 

I want to fit my body up against his. 

I want his arms to pull me to him. I want him to work at the knot in my neck with his thumb. I want him to tell me he’s been thinking about our agreement. I know he loves me; I want him to say he’s fallen in love with me. I want him to ask me if we can be together. I want him to promise me we can just eat pizza tomorrow night. 

I rub the back of my neck again. I’ll settle for the endorphins of a hug.

As soon as I reach the sofa, Scott shifts, turning to me, hands opening in welcome. I ease down on my side. His eyes open to slits as we fit ourselves together: my head on his arm, his hand on my hip, my leg tucked between his. 

My head strums from the change in altitude. I close my eyes and release my muscles, letting my body settle against him. He sighs.

His foot rubs the bottom of mine, surprising my eyes open again. I wait, staring at his neck. The pressure, the strokes against the pad of my left foot, feels important. Loving. Intimate. Like this is the most intimate thing we’ve ever done, which of course it isn’t. 

He reaches up for the blanket draped over the back of the sofa. I hadn’t noticed that he’d moved it there.

As he covers us, he rubs my foot with his again and we grow still, my arms folded up between us. 

His lips press against my hair, making the tiniest popping kiss sound before he relaxes against the powder blue throw pillow. I close my eyes and press my face into the soft warmth of his neck.

We wake to sweat and thunder.


	3. Scott

Tess’s face is stuck to my arm. Like, stuck. With sweat. And we’re used to sweat—each others’ as much as our own—but it’s still kind of gross to be all cuddled up with your sort-of-platonic life partner (and former ice dancing partner) when you’re both sweating so much that you stick to each other. 

Thunder rocks through the neighborhood, making the house tremble—the windows in the frame beside us, the silverware in their drawer in the kitchen, the clock on the highest bookshelf across the room.

I don’t mean to jump (more like slightly startle), but of course I do, and of course Tess stirs, lifting her sticky face off my arm. Which is a relief, but I worry she’ll be grossed out and will get up. She breathes in through her nose, blinking open her eyes, orienting herself. I don’t know what to do with my arms so I leave them where they are, feeling stupid, and look down at her, hoping she doesn’t want to get up. Then I realize the only parts of us that are sweating are the parts that are touching.

At the next crack of thunder, I jump again, but by the rumble I ground out the shiver in my limbs, burying the trembling deep inside my bones. I’m a 3-time Olympian, after all. I can fake it, even as I imagine the sky splitting open with blue light and fire, so deep and sharp that it breaks the world apart and Tess and I with it.

She reaches her left hand for my right one and squeezes, the same checking-in squeeze she gives me before warm ups and when I’m struggling. 

Okay, so I can’t fake it with Tessa. 

I answer “I’m okay” but I can hear the ragged way it escaped. I suck in a deep breath and hold it, listening to our friends’ big house. Rain is drumming against the windows in the northwest corner, by the guest room we’re sharing because it seemed weird to sleep in the bed the kids were conceived in. Other than that, it’s quiet, empty of the day’s normal hums and shrieks.

Tess squeezes my hand again as I breath out.

“Coming or going?” she asks of the storm, assuming I’ve been counting the seconds between flash and rumble.

I clear my throat a little and stretch my back. “I’m not sure,” I say, raspy but even, and wait for the next flash. 

Tess stretches her neck and I feel her point her toes and hold the stretch. Both of her injuries were in her shins, and those were hardest times of our lives. When she doesn’t release the stretch right away, I bring a hand to her hip.

“Do your legs hurt?” I ask. “Do you want me to massage them?” 

She shakes her head, rolling onto her back. Flexing, she cracks her hips and several vertebrae. I don’t realize I’m staring at the curve of her nose until her huge eyes lift to mine. “Ready to go up to bed?” she asks. 

It’s too dark to read the clock, and I’m kind of turned on, so I just nod. 

“Wait,” she says, once she’s standing. “Didn’t we leave this light on?” 

I step around her and lean over the lamp in question, clicking its stem several times. Nothing.

Knowing the power is out sends another tremor through me, this one much more like the kind a pirate might get after losing sight of the coast. Excitement tinged with fear, sweetened by danger. It might feel that way no matter the circumstances, but everything feels stronger, more electric, so to speak, because Tess and I are together. 

When we settle into the queen-sized guest bed—teeth brushed by cell phone flashlight, Tessa’s hair coiled up in a bun on the very top of her head, me in a clean shirt and less hard—I focus on my breathing. The storm’s power grew more pronounced as we climbed the stairs, and the absence of the clicks and hums of technology and the furnace are even more noticeable when there’s nothing to offset the punishment the house is receiving. 

It’s not like I hate storms or anything. But we don’t get a lot of electrical storms in Ontario (or Canton, for that matter). I’ve heard stories, though, about houses burning down and planes falling hundreds of feet in the air and…yeah. They aren’t my favorite. 

When I reach for Tessa’s hand between the sheets, her skin is cool. After a minute of not counting the seconds before the rumble, I realize that she’s matched her breathing to mine. I want to roll to her and press our chests together so our hearts sync, her steadiness dragging my pulse out of this horse race it seems to be trying to win. That’s not fair to her, though, and I’m wary from the effect her eyes can have on me, so I stay where I am. 

We lay awake together, listening for the kids, listening to the storm. I can tell when Tess shifts to listening inside the house because she lifts her head from the pillow and stares at the closed door. 

The rain and whistling wind grow more intense and my breathing speeds up, too, but Tess’s doesn’t. When the thunder rattles my heart against my ribs and I shrink down in the maroon sheets, Tessa uses my hand to pull herself to me. 

We rotate up onto our hips to face each other and Tess wraps her arm around my chest, her hand scratching gently at my scalp while her other hand holds me along my jaw. I scrape the edge of her shirt off her shoulder and drop my mouth to her collar bone. I love this part of her body. Smooth skin, soft planes. I love to kiss her here, open mouthed and awed, but I only can when we're skating. 

Her PJ shirt has twisted under her and I close my eyes to keep from imagining running my lips over the swells of her breasts. I press my closed lips to her collar. 

By the time the rain slacks off, my pulse is respectable again. Tess yawns, shifting away from me, and I kiss her neck goodnight. I don’t even notice what I’ve done until her breath catches. She's frozen. I feel it. We both open our eyes and stare.

Do I apologize? Do I ask to do it again?

We lay together, totally motionless, staring. 

She pulls my knuckles to her mouth and kisses them once, then closes her eyes as if falling asleep. 

Of course it's only after the storm is over and the house is too quiet that Thomas starts crying. I lay a hand on Tess's shoulder to keep in her bed as I slip backwards out of the sheets. 

I walk the kid in circles in his room, then up and down the hall, quickly becoming so exhausted that I feel like I’m going to fall over. But my leaden legs keep working, and when I crawl back into bed with Tessa, she doesn’t wake as I curl up around her and smell her hair and match my breathing to hers.


	4. Tessa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm so sorry for the chapter disorder. I saved chapter 4 as a draft Friday so I could post it from my phone on Saturday (I'm out of town without my laptop), but when I went to do so, the chaper draft didn't show up. I posted it anew but the chapter order got really messed up. My usual first readers/collaborators all had big IRL things happening today so we didn't catch it like we normally would have, and I didn't see your comments (thank you, thank you!) as early either. I'll be more careful working on mobile in the future! 
> 
> I'm so sorry to those whose comments got deleted with one of the chapters! I will cherish the emails preserving your words! 
> 
> Thank you for sticking with this fic! I've had such fun writing it and all your comments and kudos have been so encouraging! Thank you!

I hear sizzling and singing from the kitchen, smell eggs and ham and coffee and some kind of spice. When I make it into the doorway, I choke on nothing. 

Scott is shirtless, standing at the stove shifting food around the pan with a spatula. Thomas, wearing a diaper and a long sleeve white shirt he was definitely not wearing when we put him to bed last night, is wrapped around Scott’s torso, head on his shoulder, held up by Scott’s mighty left arm. Emma is sitting at the island in her PJ’s, brown hair askew, very carefully singing the names of the Paw Patrol dogs, over and over, while precisely slicing a sliver of a red pepper with her tiny green plastic knife. The whole scene makes me want to throw the kids into the garden and jump him. Or drag him into the hallway and shove his hands under my shirt while I run my fingers over every bit of his chest and biceps and neck and back.

Scott looks into the doorway and finds me, and it’s like daylight cracks across his features. Relief. Joy. “Tess.” 

Tears sting my eyes and I fight them instinctually. But I can’t swallow. Can’t speak. 

He sets the spatula down and maneuvers around the island with a twist of his hips, and I know he is going to kiss me. My mind gasps with relief, flashes to my wet toothbrush upstairs, and I lean into the doorframe so I can take the coming explosion. Take his tongue full into my mouth. His naked chest to my hands. This will be the sweetest, hottest first kiss in history.

But Thomas is shifting off his arm and the kid is leaning out toward me. My hands reach for him but the rest of me rocks back with confusion. Thomas is red-faced and pale at the same time, miserable, and I have no choice but to take his weight as Scott dumps the boy into my arms. Thomas latches his arms around my shoulders and his legs wind over my hips.

“He threw up,” Scott says. 

It seemed to take a full minute for him to cross to me but he must have learned to teleport because he’s immediately two meters away, cutting off the burners and shifting scrambled eggs onto two green plates and a smaller portion onto a blue plastic one for Emma. Back to the perfect tableau. The lie.

This isn’t our family. He doesn’t love me. 

And the kid is sick.

Thomas lays his head on my shoulder, hair damp with sweat, and I spin from the room before Scott can look at me again, or dismiss me again, or see that I’m wounded.

How am I wounded? How did I even make that assumption? He had no intention of kissing me. None. And why should he?

He doesn’t love me. He's never fallen in love with me.

On the sofa, I blink back the salt water and try to focus on the ill child in my lap. I feel his forehead. What am I supposed to feel anyway? What does his forehead normally feel like? 

“Are you feeling bad, buddy?” I ask, realizing too late that’s what Scott calls him.

He nods against my shoulder. I lean back against the sofa, falling too far and kicking my legs to right myself. We didn’t fix the cushions last night. 

I fish one carefully off the pile on the floor and wedge it behind me with one bent arm. I lean into it as I rub Thomas’s back. “When did you start feeling bad?”

He sort of half-shrugs, his arms dropping and dangling at his sides. Scott delivers a mug of coffee, the perfect shade and smell, but I don’t look at him or thank him. He sets it on the side table and presses a palm on the boy’s head. I have the ridiculous urge to swat his hand away. 

“I’d just gotten him up when he got sick,” Scott says. 

I woke up once, early in this morning, in the luxurious safety of his arms. Now I imagine him slipping out of bed, watching me sleep as he leaves without touching or waking me. Sweet, but not evidence of wanting to kiss me. 

He’d kissed me on the neck last night and felt my heart race from it. Now I feel ashamed if that. Of the way my body responds to him. And doubly ashamed of how sure I’d been that his joy at seeing me this morning was because of me, not because he wanted me to hold a sick kid.

Then I picture the vomit, caking Scott’s shirt and Thomas’s PJ’s. I picture Scott, uncertain, reaching for a washcloth, looking at the door, hoping I’ll come in. I didn’t, didn’t even hear, and at some point, though the household was deteriorating, he decided not to wake me.

“When was that?” I ask, more evenly.

“Six-twenty.”

I study the clock over his smooth, bare shoulder without letting my eyes touch him. About an hour ago.

“Should we call Bee and Ryan?” he asks. 

“What can they do?” I snap, my voice fast and sharp and I feel so ashamed, so petty. It’s not his fault I’m in love with him, or that he isn’t in love with me. I check my tone and mutter a “Sorry.” Then, “You could have woken me.” 

He waits long enough to set up for a triple loop, triple toe. Fast, steady sweep. The long look of preparation. Then the swish of the blade on the ice and…

Scott shrugs.

Not even a single. A hop.

I’m devastated all over again.

I swallow despite my ashen throat and ask, “Is Emma eating?” 

“Yeah,” he says. 

“You can go get dressed.” I settling further back with Thomas, not looking at him. “Or eat first if you want. Take a shower. Whatever you need to. We’re fine.”

I’m not looking at him, but I can feel his confusion, the edge of his annoyance. He shifts his weight from one foot to another. 

“We have to call them,” he says. “They have a right to know.”

I feel my defensiveness rising, a sure sign that he’s right, so I just nod. “I will,” I tell him, immediately regretting it. I don’t know anything. He’s the one who was there.

“I, um,” he continues, sounding more uncertain, “I left a voicemail for them already. And one at their doctor’s office. They should call when they open. But they definitely won’t see us without parental permission.” And before I can figure out how to respond, he says, “Your plate is in the microwave when you want it.”

Now I really feel like a jerk. Scott backs from the room, speaks to Emma in low tones, then heads upstairs, and once again I don’t look at him. I don’t want him to see me looking embarrassed, or worse, thirsting over his body, which I have no right to, when there’s a health crisis in my lap.

“When’s Mommy coming back?” Thomas asks, his voice sticky from disuse. 

I pull the blanket off the back of the sofa and pull it over Thomas. If he does have a fever, I don’t want him getting chilled. And if he’s just still sweaty from throwing up, he could still catch something. “A few more sleeps, darling. But we’ll talk to her today.” He takes this like a martyr, a sure sign that he feels awful.

When I was sick, my mom let me watch cartoons and gave me ginger ale. Dad brought popsicles home after work, even in winter. 

I rub the boy’s scalp with my fingers the way I do with Scott sometimes and cradle him to my warmth.

Frozen is On Demand, which feels significant. Less than a minute into the opening number, here comes Emma, carefully balancing her egg, cheese, and bell pepper scramble on her plate, the plastic fork tilting near the edge. I watch her intently enough to keep the fork in place with my will, but it fails literally half a step before Emma reaches the sofa.

“Put it here,” I tell her, laying my hand on the cushion beside me to accept her plate. “Take the fork on the floor to the sink and bring back a new one from the drawer.

“I’m not allowed in the drawer,” she says, already crawling up beside me. “There are knives and cut-y things in there I can’t see.”

The pipes squeal faintly above us. Scott just turned on the shower. 

When everyone is settled on the sofa and Emma is eating with a new fork and Anna is singing, I fish my phone out of my bra and text my mom. 

_We need help._


	5. Scott

This waiting room looks like a beach. The wood floors and walls are sand-colored, the trim and the framed boxes on the walls are all white. And inside the boxes are shells and starfish. It’s like the doctors here are trying to remind everyone of their best summer holiday, or maybe of where they’ll be once they retire. 

Thomas is looking at an orangey starfish from Tess’s lap. She hasn’t let him go since I gave him to her this morning. I offered to take him a few times, but she said “I’ve got him” in the clipped way she uses when she’s injured and kept moving, mostly away from me. She hasn’t made eye contact with me since then, either.

How can our nights be easy, comforting, even hot in their own ways, but daylight is right back to “Scott isn’t doing enough”?

I’m trying. Emma wanted me to carry her when we dropped her off at the Virtues' house. She’s probably cooking lunch with Tess’s mom and teaching her the Paw Patrol song. Thomas wanted me to put his shoes on at the house. It took way too long, but I managed it without making him scream. And then Tess picked him back up and carried him to the car even though I was still with him. It’s like she’s blaming me for him getting sick or something. And I don’t deserve that. Neither does the shirt I threw away because I couldn’t stomach the idea of trying to clean it.

The nurse steps out, spiking my heart rate. Weird, the stuff that stresses me out these days. 

“Miranda,” he calls. The dad across from us and the child flipping board books in the play area disappear into the back. The only other kids in here are babies in their carriers and a surly ten-year-old who wouldn’t be caught dead in the play area. 

“We should be next,” Tess breathes, and I get the feeling she'd have said it the same way whether or not I was here. 

Now Thomas is looking at the table with those weird twisty wire things that you shuffle beads along. Beyond it are a few trucks and a yellow kitchen set. So I lean over, propping myself up on my knees. “Hey, buddy,” I say. “Do you want to go play for a few minutes until they call us back?”

He turns his big green eyes up at me, nods, and does that bucking thing kids do when they want down. He slides to the floor, our hands steadying him though he doesn’t need it, and walks away from us. 

“That stuff’s covered in germs,” Tess mutters beside me. I’m not looking at her and don’t think this is a good time to start. 

“He’s already sick,” I answer. “Besides, he’s not gonna lick anything.”

She shifts, and my eyes dart to her before I can help it. Even when my limbs are under control, I’m still reaching for her, and for her approval. 

She’s twisted around to see the clock over the receptionist’s window, hand on the sunglasses on top of her head. When she faces front again, she mutters, “We’ll douse him in hand sanitizer as soon as they call us back.”

Trying not to look like I’m looking, I glance around at the other people in the waiting room. We’re pretty recognizable, especially together, especially in Canada, but I guess anybody’s suspicions have been set aside by the kid. Unless my knit hat has fooled no one and they’re all tweeting and snapping about our secret love child.

A monotonous pop song from the 80s is playing softly over us. Now seems like as good a time as any.

I lean forward on my knees and speak quietly over my shoulder, “What’s wrong?” 

“Beyond the obvious?” she quips. It sounds normal, but not today.

“Come on, T. Level with me. Am I doing that bad a job?”

Her head snaps toward me. I feel the jolt of her eyes, the same tingle I get every time I’m the full focus of her gorgeous, intense attention. But her eyes jerk away again. “What?”

I feel self-conscious, so I don’t answer. Instead, I watch Thomas sit a Barbie on a book and then sit down across from her. 

Tess brushes against my arm, making my eyes glaze over like we’re twelve again. 

“It’s fine,” she says. “You’re doing fine.”

I sit back. “You’re not acting like it. So what’s wrong?”

She lets out a slow breath and I know, I can feel, that she’s nervous. Turning away from the room, toward me and a tiny bit towards Thomas, who is carefully affixing one of Barbie’s skirts around his wrist, she crosses her arms. Another tell.

“You’re good at this,” she says.

“What about yesterday?”

“He was getting sick. He didn’t feel well. That’s why he kept having breakdowns.”

Which is obviously true, but not so obvious that I’d thought of it. I feel a little better, but I’m still uneasy. “What about this morning?”

She repeats in a monotone, “This morning.”

“You were so disappointed in me. It’s not my fault he got sick.”

“I know it’s not,” she answers, sounding surprised.

“Did you feel left out?”

She blinks. “No.”

“Were you annoyed I didn’t wake you?”

When she doesn’t answer, I let out a hiss of a breath. “I got them up, I made breakfast. I needed help, but I handled it until you got up. You sat up with Emma for like an hour last night. I don’t think it’s such a bad thing that I got up and handled stuff so you could sleep a little longer. I didn’t break any of the kids or burn the house down or anything.”

She shakes her head, “No, of course not.” I feel petty and lonely and annoyed and I want recognition.

“Then why are you upset?” I demand.

“I’m not upset,” she insists, some color coming back into her voice, though it grows even quieter. “You did a good job.”

I clasp my hands and cross and recross my thumbs, breathing. When I sit up to answer, I’m barely speaking at all, but I know she can hear every word. She’s got that tight, focused stillness I’m used to, the moment of paused focus before we begin a program. 

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

Her eyes dart to my face again but not my eyes. Then her expression shifts and she looks past me, an automatic smile rising.

Thomas lays his hand on my knee. He has the Barbie and the book and his new lime green cuff and wants into my lap. I lift him up and wind my arms around him without thinking. The aggression fades out of my blood and I kiss him on the top of his head.

When I next look at Tessa, she’s curled around herself, vulnerable-looking, though I can’t immediately tell why. As I watch her stare at the kid, though, I realize this is basically the first time all day she’s been without her shield. 

I’m definitely not giving him back. 

I startle at the opening door a moment before the nurse calls Thomas’s last name. We stand and follow her through a dim hallway into a florescent-lit room. 

When we’re propping Thomas on the scale, we realize he still has the toys. I coax them from him, but when I hand them to Tess for her to take them back into the waiting room, he protests with reaching hands: “No, nooo.” It’s the loudest he’s been all day and the nurse immediately sets a hand on his shoulder, gesturing Tess back in with the other.

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “You can have them back after we weigh you. We already know how much Barbie weighs. We need to see how much you weigh.” 

In the car on the way to get Thomas’s Rx, sans waiting room toys, Tess stops at a red light and says, “I didn’t realize he was sick.”

I watch her, hands too still on the wheel, glancing at me without moving her head. “So when you looked so happy and relieved in the kitchen this morning, I thought it was because you were just happy to see me.”

It takes me longer than it should to turn this over in my head and catch up with her meaning. 

“I was happy to see you,” I tell her. “I’m always happy to see you.”

“I know,” she says, though she doesn’t sound like it. “But I thought that’s all it was. I thought you were coming over to” her voice wavers, “tell me good morning. Not pass me Thomas. I was surprised and then embarrassed.”

I blink over at her. A new cartoon show lilts in high-pitched voices in the back of the van. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s not your fault you were surprised.”

Instead of answering, she looks left at the line of cars slowing under the amber light. Lifting her foot off the brake, she says, “You’re good at this.”

Not sure if her saying that means she doesn’t think _she’s_ good at it, I just say, “Thanks. You are, too.”

We turn into the parking lot, the G’s feeling much different now that I'm sitting on my butt instead of my knees. An employee muscles a long line of silver carts through the front door, all but blocking the lane in front of us. 

“I thought you were happy to see me,” Tess says as we inch our way past the employee. “Not happy I was able to help.”

This moment feels important. She’s upset and whatever I say next is really, really important. 

I just don’t know why. Or what I need to say. 

So, quietly, eventually, staring at her face, I say, “It was both.” 

She whips into a space near the doors of the grocery store/pharmacy where Thomas’s doctor called in the Rx. Suddenly cheerful, she says, “Why don’t you wait here and I’ll go get his medicine?” She unbuckles her seatbelt and loops her bag’s strap over her body. 

I shake my head at her, looking toward the front of the building. “No, wait. I’ll go get it.” 

She beams at me and her eyes are shining like she’s about to cry. “Everything’s fine. I’ll be right back.” 

“Tess, wait,” I reach for her arm again. Whatever’s happening, I’m afraid to let her go. “Tell me what’s wrong, first.”

She slides out of the van and her smile drops away. Now I know she's about to cry, so I bolt out, too. 

“Tessa.” I reach an arm out at the van’s back bumper and she steps into it, like she wanted me to do it. Like we’d practiced it. 

She’s close, really close, so I start to back up, to give her space. But her eyes catch me. Distract me. Root me in place. 

And in that second of surprise and hesitation, she presses her lips to mine.


	6. Tessa

“Shit.” 

I don’t mean to say it. Definitely don’t mean to say it into Scott's slack mouth. 

I didn’t mean to kiss him, either.

“Sorry,” I mutter, heart hammering as I pull back. He’s dazed, too dazed to open his eyes or close his mouth. Too startled to even be confused yet. 

Good. 

“I—slipped,” I lie. 

The van door is still open behind him, heat rolling out because I left the keys in the ignition. “I’ll be right back,” I say, and I bolt, weaving between cars to get to another row. I want to look back but I’m too scared of what his face will tell me.

I shoot through the front doors and up the nearest aisle, pulling my collar up and crossing my arms so hopefully no one will notice me. Then I weave into another aisle and, seeing the gridlock around the pasta, turn out of it again. I finally stop beside the paper plates and plastic spoons and pull out my phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey Mom,” I say, the force of my cheerfulness and the familiarity of her voice springing fresh tears into my eyes. I swallow hard.

“Hi Tessa,” she says, and I can hear Emma singing to herself. “How’s Thomas doing? What’d the doctor say?”

I tell her briefly about the prescription. “I’m at the pharmacy to get it, then we’ll come get Emma.”

“Well, don’t rush, hon, we’re having a good time.”

“It’s okay,” I say for what feels like the thousandth time. “We appreciate your help so much.”

There’s a pause. “Mom?” I ask.

Footsteps sound and I hear the kitchen door swing open, flap closed. Her voice drops to the same note my sister and I use when we're trying to be quiet. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I choke out, even smiling, like that will help me hide the truth from the person who birthed me. 

“Tessa.” It’s firm and sympathetic and my throat is immediately so full of phlegm and tears that I know she’ll know if I say anything. 

I notice a man watching me, so I spin on my heel and move toward the corner of the store that houses the pharmacy.

“Tessa,” she says again. “What’s wrong?”

“I may,” I breathe, glancing around me and ducking into the greeting card and magazine aisle, “have kissed Scott.” 

She waits so long that I’d be worried if I couldn’t hear her breathing. “Well, shit.”

A laugh bursts out of me. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard her say that before.

“Please don’t say anything,” I tell her, wiping my eyes. “To Scott or to Dad or anyone. I didn’t mean to. I was upset about something from this morning and he was trying to get me to talk to him, and it just kind of happened.”

I know a blow is coming from the build up of silence before my mom's words. I feel it well before it lands and steady myself against the racks of birthday cards. “The way it used to happen before Vancouver?”

Vancouver. Kissing him was connection and reassurance and only ever on the ice. Only even when I was in pain but skating, which was always, and only ever when he was thanking me for skating. Every kiss said “I love you.” But we haven’t done that in a while. We haven’t been as desperate every moment together as in those two months leading up to our first gold medal-winning long program. 

It’s kind of humiliating that your mom watched you kiss someone and wondered what it meant for 8 years. 

Not that we haven’t kissed on the ice since then. Like in Sochi. Pyeongchang. But I think that’s because we were remembering how we were feeling in Vancouver.

“It—I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know why I did it.”

She says my name and I feel safe. Mom’s always been my safe place, and made everywhere around her safe. “You’ve loved each other in an undeniable way for twenty years.”

“But not like this,” I counter, rubbing the snot from beneath my nose with my sleeve. I edge sideways until I can see the pick-up window at the pharmacy.

“So what if it hasn’t been romantic before? At least in an active way," she says. “Why can’t it change?”

My dad’s voice sounds from the next room, steady and sonorous. The same voice read me to sleep and narrates tours and tells us he's proud of us. I want to curl up inside my mother saying my name and my dad reading me an uncomplicated story of true love. 

I realize I’ve been silent for a while. “How’s Emma?” I ask. 

“She’s doing fine. We had baby burgers and baby carrots for lunch and now she and your dad are coloring. She’s a very creative little girl.”

“Mmm,” I agree, swallowing several times. 

“She insisted on the carrots.”

“Oh?” I say, too high, distracted. There's no line at the pharmacy window right now.

“She’s young," Mom says, dragging my attention back, "but she knows what’ll be best for her.”

Several minutes later, I'm standing under the awning in front of the store's entrance. I would rather walk the four miles back to the house than go back to that minivan, but there’s no way around it. I have the medicine. Thomas needs to get home to take it. We have to go get Emma. So I have to act like everything’s normal with Scott. 

I don't want to break us. 

I weave my way back through carts and cars and people, trying to hold my head up without being noticed. I don’t want anyone to watch me, but I also don’t want Scott to see me coming. 

When I catch sight of him, he’s twisted around in the seat, probably talking with Thomas, and I dart behind a Land Rover. 

My heart’s hammering again. I lower my eyes, smile at the clerk pushing a short row of carts as I dodge around him, then slip up the side and pull open the driver’s door.

“Got it,” I say, saddling my way into my seat. I twist around to look at Thomas. “How are we doing?”

The light of the screen mounted in front of him brightens his face. He’s pale and asleep. 

The door locks engage and I jump, looking back at my door, then across to Scott, who’s bent over the console. His hands lift my bag’s strap over my head.

“I got it,” I say, holding up the purse, paper bag from the pharmacy crinkling and peeking out the top. He takes it from me and sets it on the floor. He grasps the zipper of my puffy, dark purple coat and drags it down.

“Scott,” I manage, heart hammering. “What are you doing?”

The zipper isn’t completely undone when his hands slide beneath my coat, across my sides and around to my back. I feel my body relax at his firm, warm touch and am easily pulled toward him. 

Then his face is approaching mine and I don’t know what to do. 

“Scott,” I say again, and everything pauses, hovers.

One of his hands moves to my cheek. I try not to lean into it.

“Tessa.”

My name sounds sexy. Husky, half-whispered. Desired. Held. Cherished.

Safe.

I shut my eyes because his face is _so close_ and I can’t think when he’s looking at me like he wants me.

His hand slides out of my coat and presses, firmly, against my sternum. My heart lurches to an even faster pace.

I swallow. I don't think I can do this now. “We have to go get Emma.”

The van hums beneath us. Carts rattle by. Peppa Pig insists spiders aren’t scary, though Thomas isn’t aware of her. But Scott stays still and silent so long that I slit my eyes open again.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.

I lick my lips. His eyes fix to them. 

“Emma,” I say again.

His eyes rise with lust, now with a twinge of another emotion’s heat, and I have that same urge to jump him that I did this morning.

We breathe, utterly still. I swallow and force my chest to stop heaving.

When Scott withdraws, it’s slow, jerky, then all at once. He slides back into his seat like he never left that spot and says nothing. 

The moment’s broken. And I broke it. 

We back out of the space (thank goodness nothing was behind me) and are silent the entire way to my parents’ house.


	7. Scott

I feel like a tiger or something, stalking through the house, trying to act normal but watching Tess. I’m seething, lusting, wishing, wiping butts, cooking, kissing foreheads. But I’m hyper aware of her. And the moment both kids are in their rooms, I take her hand and lead her to our bedroom.

“Emma might get up,” she protests in a whisper, shoulders high and eyes sweeping the floor and furniture. "And we need to listen out for Thomas." 

I shut the door.

She stands a heartbeat away. “I should finish the dishes.”

“Tessa.” Her eyes lock with mine. They’re huge and full and wanting and a thin version of afraid. “Why do you get to kiss me but I don’t get to kiss you?”

She presses her lips together and leans back against the dresser. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. I was,” she grasps for the word as my blood roars, “stressed.”

I employ my best Olympian discipline to make myself stay where I am. I’d rather cross to her, pin her between me and the dresser, and kiss her until she shoves me backwards onto the bed and crawls on top.

“I’m stressed,” I tell her. “About Thomas and Emma and laundry and groceries and everything else. But mostly I’m stressed about you.”

She swallows, immediately shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a stressor in your life.”

Not sure what to say to that, I go back to what I rehearsed in the van, everything I’d wanted to say after she didn’t want me to kiss her.

“I’m stressed because I love you and I want you and I don’t know what you want,” I say, taking a single step forward. “I thought you showed me today. Even if it you didn’t plan on it, you kissed me. Is this what you want?” I think my voice is even and calm, more Olympian discipline, but I hear the edge of uncertainty. And here’s the big jump, the hardest one I’ve ever attempted. “Do you want me?” 

Her eyes are huge and I swear she’s shaking. I force my hands not to reach for her, to rub warmth into her limbs, to reassure her. I force myself to stay and wait. 

She swallows and nods. 

Relief floods my limbs. 

I feel myself smile and sag, but this is serious. Plus I want to look sexier. So I force my cheeks to relax. 

“But?” I ask.

Tess shivers hard and I can hope it’s from my nearness and that it’s a good thing. 

“But,” she answers, glancing down and away before meeting my eyes again, “I’m afraid.”

I’d figured that out, but I still hate hearing it. I want to step to her and hold her, but I don’t. I gesture to the bench at the foot of the bed and Tess takes a seat. Lowering myself beside her, I run my hand up and down her back, like when she’s nervous before a skate, especially in the months after her injuries.

She’s gripping the bench’s edge so hard, but sitting beside her makes us feels like a team again. Partners in the kiss and cry. It’s all out there. We’re just waiting for the details to be clarified and the results issued. I feel good about this one. 

“What are you afraid of?” I ask.

She could say a thousand things. Me, the future, the press, ruining what we have, disappointing our families, hurting me, being hurt. I don’t think she’ll say all her fears, but I know she’ll be honest. Today, right now, as the sun sets on the world as it was, she’ll admit what she can, and we’ll deal with it.

“I know you love me,” she says. The words thrill my pulse into a gallop and I swallow for calm. “In Pyeongchang, you told everyone you think about me when you hear ‘I Will Love You’. But I want you to fall in love with me. I want you to choose me for life,” her throat tightened around the word, “not just as an ice dancing partner or a friend, but a lover and wife and mother.” She blinks as my heart rocks with warmth and relief and a little anxiety. 

Tessa wants to have children with me. Shit, that feels good. My cock thinks so, too.

“I know that’s a lot,” she continues, fast, blinks up at me with her gorgeous, giant eyes. “It’s just…” 

I slip my hand down to hers and squeeze, the checking in squeeze she does with me. 

I want to speak. Words are almost bursting out of me, though I have no idea what they’ll be. But she isn’t done, so I wait.

“I don’t know,” Tess finally says, shaking her head in a graceful sweep. “I don’t want to _not_ know anymore.” 

I swear I hear a pair of tiny feet hit the floor down the hall. If she gets distracted now, if I’m not extremely clear, if she feels rejected, I don’t know when or how Tessa will become this vulnerable with me again. I’ve seen her close herself off when in pain. I don’t ever want to go back there.

Grasping both of Tessa’s hands before she can notice, I say, “I fell in love with you years ago. I want to love you in every way possible.” I realize that sounds dirty, but it no longer sounds wrong, the way embarrassing things I said in interviews did. “It’s the only thing I want,” I say. “The only thing I’m sure of about my future. I want it to be ours.”

Tears well her eyes again but she doesn’t let herself experience them.

She takes a deep breath but her voice still quivers when we asks, “Do you think you could love me forever?”

I pull her to her feet and into a hug. I lift her off her feet and hold her against my chest. She holds me by the back of my head. I set her down, and we pull each other closer, closer, tighter.

We breathe. We sync.

I kiss her ear and whisper, “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this week, but I hope the wait was worth it!


	8. Tessa

Scott slides his arms across the comforter, lifting his body over me, and my knees part for him. He settles his hips against mine and I can feel him swelling and hardening between my legs. I press into him without meaning to, the touch shooting warmth up to my scalp. When he kisses me, I moan into his mouth. 

His tongue thrusts upward suddenly, pulling me with him and away from the exquisite pressure.   
   
I open my eyes and grind back against him. His breath hitches, and he opens his eyes, drawing back to see me. 

We’re here. Somehow, we’re here. We’re together.  
   
I pull my hands from his biceps, his glorious biceps, to run through his hair. This time, he sighs.  
   
After a few minutes, Scott props himself up on one arm and slips the other under my shirt.   
   
When his fingers reach the skin beneath my bra, which takes a ridiculously long time, I jar without meaning to.   
   
Freezing, Scott asks, “Is this okay?”   
   
I nod and he touches his forehead to mine.   
   
He pushes his hand to the side, replacing his fingertips with his thumb, tracing the curve, and kisses me again. This time, it’s soft. And just as softly, his strong finger skims underneath the wire and lights my sensitive skin with flames.

I break this kiss to ask, “Will you take my bra off?”   
   
Scott nods, kissing me again. His hand shifts under me and I lift up to give him room. His fingers fumble, making me grin. He’s so athletic and strong and precise, it’s weird and cute that his fingers aren’t sure how to do this. After a few giggles from me, he wraps his other hand around my ribcage and together they tighten, then release the band around my ribcage.  
   
Scott hesitates, then fishes his hand through the neck of my shirt, lifting a strap and trying to reach it out of the way. 

I laugh at him again, tapping his hand away and sitting up. I pull the straps off my shoulders and bend each arm through the holes. Since when does folding your elbows feel awkward?  
   
Once I toss the bra onto the bench at the foot of the bed, I lay on my back and Scott settles himself against my side, blushing, and says, “Sorry.”  
   
I run my fingers back through his hair. His hair, growing longer and longer.  
   
Scott cups my whole breast in his hand and we both sigh.  
   
“Your hands are warm,” I murmur.  
   
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he runs the pads of his fingers over my skin, coming ever nearer to my nipple. Before he reaches it, though, he squeezes me with his full hand and takes my tit between his teeth.  
   
My shirt must not taste very good, because his tongue stays out of it. But hell, it’s sensual.   
   
When he lifts his mouth, his fingers find me and pull.  
   
My back arches off the sofa and I’m suddenly breathing kind of fast.  
   
_More, more,_ my body chants.   
   
But I’ve barely touched Scott yet. I seize the hem of his shirt with both my hands.   
   
“Shirt?” I ask.   
   
He nods and sits up, guiding the fabric as I strip it off.   
   
I stare, then lift up and press a kiss to the cool curve of his peck. This time, Scott hisses.   
   
“Is this okay?”  
   
He nods again.   
   
“Can I use my mouth?”  
   
His “yes” is a half-strangled grunt.   
   
I take his nipple between my lips as he resettles himself over me and he jerks, but quickly returns his peck to my mouth. I lick him again and wraps my legs around his.   
   
After a few minutes, he leans into my ear and asks the same question. I’m sure my “yes” sounds no more dignified than his.  
   
He uses both hands to slide my purple shirt up my body, gathering it above my boobs. We both look at my pale breasts a moment before he descends. 

My little “ohs” and “mmms” and “ah-ahhhhs” transform me into a woman of lust. I run my fingers up and down his abs when I can reach them, and slide up his sides when I can’t. His cock pushes insistently against the inside of my thigh.  
   
I’m trembling with desire. But I don’t want to do too much. Not yet. We need to ease into this or we’ll fall. We’ll fail. We won’t be able to catch ourselves. I’d like to say that’s caution talking, but I know it’s also fear.   
   
“Are you cold?” Scott breathes, lifting his face to look at me. He reaches under my shirt still further to rub circles on my shoulders. He shifts forward, covering my chest with his own. I shake my head. His brows crinkle together, uncertain. His hands grip my shoulders, pressing me a little more into the mattress, “You’re shaking.”  
   
“It’s want,” I tell him. His eyes hood and he lifts himself up to kiss me. 

“I don’t want to have sex tonight.” 

I didn’t mean to say that. I blurted it, but it came out soft, and for some reason I’m shaking my head. 

Scott mimics the movement, grazing my cheek with his nose. Then it’s a stroke, soft and hypnotic.   
   
“Whenever you want,” he whispers to me. My heart stutters, and my body protests, but the tension in my neck eases.  
   
My cheeks lift in a smile that makes him pull away so he can see it. 

“Well,” I answer, “not _whenever_. I wanted to jump you this morning when you were cooking breakfast, but it wasn’t a good time.”   
   
His cock twitches and I press my leg into him, grinning. He groans, playfully, and drops his lips to mine, then to my breast again, kissing each tit with a wet smack before pulling my shirt back down.   
   
Scott slides his hands under me again so that he’s holding me by my shoulder blades. Secure.  
   
“What do you want?” he asks. He might have said “How much do you feel comfortable doing?” or “Should I stop?” or “What do you want to happen next?” But he asked what I want.   
   
I want to stay in the safety of this bed, his arms around me, no one watching, no one expecting anything of us. I want to fuck him. I want to make love with him. I want him to fill me and his cum to coat me. I want to make him shake with lust and build something entirely new with him. I want it for years, decades. The rest of our lives. 

I don’t want to screw anything up by screwing him.  
   
Down the hall, books cascade from a shelf and fwap onto the floor.   
   
Scott lowers his forehead to my chest and groans. I rub my fingernails against his scalp and he dissolves against me.  
   
“Let me put Emma back to bed,” I say, feeling shy but powerful. “Then can we cuddle?”  
   
He nods, eyes buoyant. He squeezes me.  
   
I’m grounded in his hands and heartbeat.   
   
Then he rolls away, his sweatpants tented as he watches me pass from the room.  
   
When I come back, he’s stripped down to his Canada-red boxers and is laying under just the sheet, chest exposed. He looks like the cover of a romance novel. I'm giggling before I can help it.  
   
“What?” he demands.  
   
When I tell him, he pulls me down on top of him and growls, sending me into another giggle fit. I straddle him and press his hands into the mattress. I kiss him hard, then soften it, calming us. When I lay down on top of him, I feel his cock push against my mound. We nudge each other as we trace the lines in each other's hands.  
   
Physically and emotionally, it’s been a long day. But as we lay together in bed, tucked into one another, everything feels calm. It’s not much different from how we’ve lain on previous nights, but it feels like more. There’s still heat, profound heat, between us, but there’s also peace. Trust. 

I tell him how I put Emma back to bed without looking at or talking to her, and when we hear her get up again, Scott goes instead. I don’t count how many times she gets up, but we take turns until she stays.  
   
I’m almost asleep when Scott breathes, “On the flight home from Peongchang, almost everyone fell asleep.” 

I murmur a little “mmm” to show I’m listening. Opening my eyes seems like too much effort. 

“I felt so lonely," he says. "And lost. I watched you sleep for a long time.” He pauses, fingers skimming my shoulder. “I was afraid I'd lose you.”  
   
I open my eyes and I find his eyes shining. As I watch, a few tears drip onto his face. He blinks at them but doesn't shy away from my gaze. I wipe them away, smiling at his tender, loving heart. 

One of his arms locks around me, the other holds the hand folded against my body. I nuzzle into his soft, warm neck and kiss his skin. “You won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, friends! I scrapped and rewrote this one several times.


	9. Scott

I find Tessa downstairs on the sofa, the kids on either side of her with strips of French toast in their hands. Their faces are lit blue and Ellen Degeneres’s voice sings out around them. Tess must have heard me coming down the stairs because her eyes link with mine immediately.   
   
Her hair in the same bun she slept in. Her big eyes soft with what looks exactly like love. She’s wearing one of my grey v-neck t-shirts and a pair of black leggings. I lean against the doorframe so I can keep looking at her.  
   
“We got to use the cutter!” proclaims Emma.   
   
Oh right. Kids.  
   
“What?” I ask.  
   
“Tessa let us cut up the toast—” she slices through the air with both hands, making a vicious _shleeeeep_ sound, “—with the cutter!”  
   
“The pizza cutter,” prompts Tess. Emma doesn’t dignify the clearly needless clarification with a reply, so Tess shrugs up at me. “And we did it together.”  
   
“What sound did it make again, Emma?” I ask.   
   
She repeats the sound, peaking her hands together in front of her stomach then pushing outward and upward as far as her limbs will go. _Shleeeeeeep!_  
   
“Wow. Good job,” I tell her, approaching, getting a high five, then a fist bump. Then I pretend to reach for the plate in her lap. “Can I have a piece?”  
   
She swats my hand away. “No.”  
   
“No?” I ask, feigning shock, squatting in front of her so I’m at her eye level. “No?” I say it higher, and again, and again, going higher and higher until she laughs. I use one hand to tickle her side and reach the other one out for Thomas, tweaking his toe gently. He wriggles with delight and squirms further into Tessa’s side. His coloring is better, but his eyes are still rimmed red.  
   
“Emma?” I ask. She calms a little to hear me. “Can I have a piece?”  
   
“No!” She shouts. I flop back on my back, flinging my arms out, like the force of her No physically repelled me. All three laugh and I lay there a moment before rolled forward smartly, back into my crouch.   
   
“Okay, okay!” I put a hand to my heart, then bonked my head with the heel of my hand, sprawling backwards again. Emma and Thomas laughed themselves onto their sides.

I lift my head. “How about now?”

Both kids shout no and I drop my head back. Harder than I meant to. 

After a minute I sit up again and kneel in front of Tessa, hands on her knees. She grins at me and waits.  
   
“Good morning,” I say.   
   
“Good morning.”   
   
I kiss her once, as the kids’ voices change to surprised giggles, and again, both our mouths splitting with smiles at the kids’ reactions.

“Have you eaten?” I ask her. She shakes her head.  
   
I’m scrambling our eggs when Tessa pads across the tile, wraps her arms around my chest, and squeezes. I cover her arm with my free one and twist around to kiss her forehead. 

She sighs against me, and my heart kicks into a higher gear.

“It smells good,” she says, but I don’t answer.

I twist the hob’s knob to zero and move the pan to a back burner. T steps to the side as I step around her, lifting my arm over her head before closing both around her. We press together again.

She feels incredible. Smooth and cool and lithe and trusting. Happy.

“How did you sleep?” she asks.

I just nod. “You?”

“Like heaven.”

I frame her face with my hands. “Can I kiss you this morning?”

She nods.

“Can I touch you?” 

Her lips quirk up, and again she nods.

I want to make her ache, so I’m slow and insistent, licking progressively deeper. I press her into the kitchen island, her back to the door, and thank God and Disney for making this movie. When she moans, gently, into my mouth, I reach into my sweatpants to adjust myself. Then I reach both hands under her shirt.

“May I?” I ask. 

“Please do,” she breathes back. 

I unclasp her bra and swipe my thumbs over her nipples in one fast motion.

Tessa jars and swallows a cry, seizing my upper arms hard. I lean against her, filling her mouth with my tongue, my presence, worrying her nipples and squeezing handfuls of her breasts. 

Her hands scramble for the counter, pushing the plates away, then lifts herself up to sit. She catches the corner of a plate and we both chuckle as she shifts, taking it out from under her. I stack it with the other and set them both in the sink.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t love a taste of your ass,” I tell her quietly. “But who knows where those leggings have been.” She snorts and I’m drowning in how adorable she is. 

Carefully, I gather up the fabric of her bra and my shirt she's wearing, lifting it all to one side, watching the dark skin dimple before I close my mouth around her nipple and suck. 

The strangled sound she tries not to make goes straight to my cock, and I'm eager, pulling and teasing to make her cry out again, but she's controlling herself, holding herself upright with one arm and holding on to my neck with the other.

Ryan and Bee are coming back tomorrow, and babysitting will be over. Thank you, God.

I'm just registering that I need to adjust myself again when I feel Tessa's strong hand against my sweatpants. 

Now I’m the one groaning, her nipple in between my teeth, pulling and trying to be gentle as I press my groin into her hand. 

She shifts her torso away from me and I let go, lifting my face and blinking my eyes open, dazed at the light. She glances back at the door, so I do, too. Nothing. No tiny hands or eyes.

Tessa pushes me a step back with her knees and slides to the floor. Her fingers trace the band of my sweats, then my boxer briefs, slipping centimeters under and making me even harder. 

Without warning, she slides both hands down, into my boxers, and squeeze my butt. I jump, of course, making a very dignified “uh” sound, and she laughs quietly at me. I press my lips to hers again and, this time, she sets the pace, making me moan as her fingers knead my flesh. Then they rise and slide around the band.

“Can I touch you?” she asks.

I have to swallow before I answer. “You mean more than you already have?”

She winks at me and I capture her mouth again, stoking my tongue against hers. When she pulls back she breathes, “Can I hold your cock, Scott?”

“Fuck yes,” I answer, my eyes already falling closed as my body trembles. “Please.”

She starts slowly, lifting the elastic away from me, sliding her thin right hand, which I know and have held for twenty years, into new space. She finds me throbbing and half slanted against the edge of the boxers’ bulge. I curse again, under my breath, when her skin meets mine, each of us soft and smooth and hard. 

I glance at the empty doorway. 

Tess lifts my cock upright and I nearly whimper from the pleasure, the rightness of her touch after so many years of yearning. 

When she squeezes the head, she makes a husky, pleased sound.

I’m about to ask her if she likes what she’s found—only because she obviously does—when her finger swirls, and pre-cum makes her finger glide. 

This time I whimper, honestly whimper, and slit my eyes enough to see the empty doorway one more time before I lower my forehead to her shoulder. My arms are locked around her and I ride the rising tension, disciplining myself against any movement as I let her explore me. 

She begins hesitantly, softly, and it’s exquisite. A single finger traces along the head, her nail lightly scraping over my hole. My pre-cum lets her fingers skate around me, but not for long. When she pulls the boxers out far and grips me in her full fist, a red light flares in my head.

Before she can move, I take her wrists with in my hands, gently withdrawing both, wincing when the band slaps against my tip.

We’re both breathing so hard.

“I want you to keep going so much,” I whisper, “but you’d better stop now.”

She nods and lowers her hands. “Too much?”

“Not the right time,” I reply. 

“Mmm," she purrs. “Maybe during nap time.”

I groan into her neck and hold her close, my cock lifting toward her again. 

The eggs are too cold to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay! I was planning for 10 chapters total, but the pacing isn't working out that way. Thank you for being patient!


	10. Tessa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being so patient!

The afternoon doesn’t go according to plan. Thomas becomes inconsolable during the end of The Secret Life of Pets, screaming and sobbing for a solid twenty minutes, even though the dogs survive. I take Emma upstairs to play before nap time but she only wants to play in Thomas’s room. I let her, which works out fine until Scott brings Thomas upstairs. Seeing Emma with his blocks and action figures sets him off again. Emma insists on taking Thomas’s Batman action figure to bed with her, which we manage by distracting Thomas with his Supergirl and Superdog figures. 

But then Emma spills her cup of 1 part water / 2 parts apple juice all over her bed. I can’t even figure out how she did it. Those caps are hard for me to twist off half the time. 

By the time I’ve got clean sheets on her bed and more juice mixture in a fresh cup, with strict instructions to keep the lid on, it’s forty-five minutes past the start of nap time and Scott still hasn’t come out of Thomas’s room. I pull Emma’s door closed and push Thomas’s open, just a bit. Scott is laying on his side in Thomas’s bed, his head propped up with his hand, and Thomas laying on his back with a book. They both look up at me. I’m not sure what to say. I don’t want to break whatever deal Scott and Thomas have struck and I don’t want to set him off again. But I do want to rescue Scott if I can.

“Everything okay in here?” I ask.

Thomas answers “Yep” and goes back to “reading,” making up words to match the pictures on each page. Scott winks at me and mouths, “Sorry.” 

I smile and mouth, “You okay?” He nods. 

I slide my phone to out, wiggling it in the air, “Text me if you need me.” 

He pats his hips and butt, even his peck, until he finds his own phone has slipped out onto the mattress behind him. Curling it into his hand under his head, he winks at me again. 

I’d like to lay down in our room until Scott can get away, but I just put the last set of clean twin-sized sheets on Emma’s bed, so I listen at Emma’s door a moment, then head downstairs.

The laundry room is a wreck. We’ve mostly just been throwing piles of laundry into the room and pulling the door closed again. I don’t think either of us has really looked inside all wekk.

I start the apple juiced sheets immediately, along with some towels about the same shade of torquoise. Then I make piles of tiny socks and little shirts, marveling at how such small pieces add up to such big piles. Then I remember Scott’s and my respective piles of laundry on the floor of the closet upstairs.

Those will have to wait for tonight. 

When Scott finally makes his way downstairs, I’m washing dishes until the sheets are done. He holds me from behind, pressing his cock firmly against my butt, dropping a kiss to my neck. I close my eyes and lay my head back against his shoulder. Everything feels wonderfully still. Scott squeezes me around my shoulders, then moves to my side, his hand grazing my lower back.

“He’s asleep?” I ask.

Scott nods. “Emma too.” He hesitates, then says, “I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s a lot of play time now.”

I’d figured we’d have to wait, but it’s still disappointing to hear. I shrug. “There was never going to be loads of time.” 

Scott takes the kitchen towel in one hand and a glass from the strainer with the other. 

“I think we need a plan for this afternoon,” I say, rinsing the pizza cutter before placing it where the glass had been. 

“Good idea. We need to tire them out.” 

“I thought I could take Emma to the grocery store after she gets up. Just to get her out, keep her quiet until Thomas wakes up.”

“Thomas needs to get out, too. That’s why he’s having meltdowns. He needs more stimulation.”

I shake my head. “We can’t take him out, he’s sick.”

“He’s almost back to normal.”

I doubt that. Most of what we thought was normal this week was him feeling worse and worse without us noticing. But Scotty has bonded with him. Getting Thomas out of the house might still be good for him. 

“I was thinking bowling,” Scott says. 

“Bowling?” I drop the knife I’d been soaping and turn toward him. “They cannot go bowling. The germs are awful.”

Scott snorts a laugh, “It’s not like he’s going to lick anything.”

“Not other people’s germs,” I answer with more heat than I mean. I take a breath and lick my lips. “I mean his germs. Other kids will get sick if we take him out in public, with all the things he'll need to touch to play. Inside the holes of the ball. The shoes.”

Scott doesn’t answer, just adds the plate he’s been working on to the pile on the kitchen island behind him.

“I guess that means no arcades, either.”

“Right,” I say.

“What about skating?”

“Skating?” I echo, my forehead creasing into a lot more lines than I want to have. 

“Yeah. We’ll put them in gloves, they won’t be touching stuff.”

“Is the cold air going to be good for Thomas?”

“We skated at their ages when we were sick.”

I remember. I remember my burning lungs and my giant gloves, but being so happy because I was skating. I remember Scott’s brothers teasing me about my gloves for years. And my Mom trying to find home video of that for one of the features they did on us.

Dread sinks into my core, creeping up my spine until I can’t help but shiver.

“Scott,” I venture, “do you think it’s a good idea for us to go to a public rink right now? Together?”

He wipes a plate much longer than needed.

“Maybe not,” he says, and I hate how defeated he sounds. “We can’t watch the kids if we’re giving autographs and taking selfies.” 

Right. That, too.

“And,” I say, “we look really couple-y with the kids. We don’t want things to get out on social media before we even get a chance to try, you know?”

He shrugs, straighten the stack of plates on the kitchen island. “People already think that. It won’t make much of difference.”

“Except it’s real now. The stakes are higher.”

The washer buzzes in the next room but neither of us move to go change loads. 

After a minute in the too quiet, Scott asks, his voice low, “Does it matter if people know?”

I rinse my hands and Scott holds the towel out to me to dry them. 

Facing him, I take a measured breath. He puts the knife back into the strainer and lays the towel on top. I set my hands on his shoulders and watch his chest, matching my breathing to his. 

Leaning back against the dish washer, Scott sets his hands on my hips and guides me toward him. When I’m circled in his arms, hips to hips, I say, “I don’t want to mess this up.” 

Scott lowers his forehead to mine. “We won’t.”

“There’s a lot of pressure in being looked at,” I say, swallowing. “Sometimes I don’t feel safe.”

Scott’s grip tightens but he doesn’t answer. 

I continue, “Just existing in the world can make me feel unsafe. I know people are watching me. It’s…like a threat. Like walking alone at night and you can hear footsteps somewhere behind you.” 

His eyes are compassionate and loving, but I know he probably hasn’t had an experience like this before. “It might be nothing. They might not have anything on their mind but where they’re going. But they see you. And you don’t know what they’ll do. And—and people can be cruel.” 

Scott pulls me closer again, but I don’t want a hug. I don’t want him to think he has to hug this away. Or that he can. I’m a woman in public and on the internet. People feel entitled to me, my story, my body, my choices. 

I let him hold me a moment before pulling back. “It hasn’t been as bad these last few months,” I tell him, “but if we start dating, it’ll be huge again. We’ll be everywhere.”

His eyebrows twitch and his mouth sets into a troubled line. “You don’t want to date after all?”

“No!” I answer, running back over what I said. “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean date publicly. I mean everyone knowing. I mean not being able to go to dinner together without it being all over social media before our entrees arrive.”

“They’re going to know eventually,” he says. “We can try to keep us a secret, but I don’t think we’ll be happy in secret. I know there’s more pressure on you. I’d love to hide away with you, let you keep this a secret until you’re comfortable, but I don’t think that’s possible.” 

_Hide away with you._ I itch to touch him again, but dip my hands back into the sink instead.

I nod as I fish three spoons out of the water. He leans against my hip and waits.

I've finished with all the silverware when Scott breathes my name. I still, and he asks, “Why do you think we won’t be able to stand the pressure? We’re three-time Olympians. We won gold twice, even after years off.”

I lean into him, placing my head on his shoulder. “Because home was safe. And on the ice, with you, was safe. And our comeback was just for us, not for anyone else.”

I hear the similarities as I speak. _This_ is for the right reasons, too. We haven't jumped into it. We waited until after we retired, after we did everything in skating that we wanted to do.

When Scott's voice comes, it’s so gentle and warm that I want to curl up inside it. “Don’t you think we’ll be safe together? Wherever we are?”

It can't be this simple, but I do.


	11. Scott

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! One chapter left.

Tessa takes Emma to the grocery store after naps and I book a private session at the rink for tomorrow morning. If Ryan and Bee’s flight lands on time, we should all get back to the house about the same time.

That night, after reading a lot of Dr. Seuss and Pete the Cat and watching too many episodes of Paw Patrol (good God, that theme song is awful), we escape into our bedroom and lock the door. 

I catch her halfway across the room, kissing her until she moans into my mouth. Then I turn her around in the doorway to the bathroom, holding her against me so the soft undersides of her breasts pillow over my arm. 

She immediately presses back against me. For a minute, I just enjoy her ass pressing against my cock like she wants it. And wants me. 

I slide my free hand down her torso and up, squeezing her breasts by the fistful and teasing her nipples with my nails. She braces herself against the doorframe. When my fingers reach the band of her leggings, I ask, “May I make you cum?” 

She shivers, still pressing into me. "Mm hmm."

I slide beneath the fabric slowly, but her leggings are too tight. Like, way too tight. And they don't breathe. But she says they're comfortable.

I strip them off her and admire the edges of her yellow panties with my fingertips, making her shiver, before standing again. My fingers learn my way around her pubic hair as we watch each other’s eyes in the mirror opposite us. When I find her folds, I part them and dip a finger into the heat of her valley, making her groan and drop her head against her chest. 

She's so wet. 

Her breathing labors quickly as I thumb her clit and slide my hand along her. 

“Is this okay?” I ask. Her head’s still bowed but she breathes, “Yes.” 

I tighten my grip on her chest and rub my swelling cock between her butt cheeks through the smooth fabric. She dips and pushes to better the angle, first against my penis, then my hand. Soon, we're both breathing fast and Tessa orders, “Inside. Go inside me.” I press my fingers in, trying to be gentle and slow, but she sits down on my hand, wanting more. Then I fumble, trying get the angle right, though I can’t see what I’m doing and it’s been a while since I’ve done this with anyone. 

I bend my knees to help brace her, trying to help her stay up as she pistons around my hand faster and harder, moaning exquisitely as I wiggle my fingers inside her. I'm painfully hard and spill precum all over her lower back and panties.

When she begins to cry out I push my finger as far up inside her as I can and pull her hard against me with my other arm. 

“Look up, Tessy,” I say. “Look at us.” In the mirror opposite, we watch her tremble and piston a few last times and come around my hand, half collapsing. 

God, she’s so beautiful. And her legs are tired.

I carry her onto the bed and spread her knees, grabbing a towel to clean my hand. It's too late for her back, so I lay between her legs with my head on her stomach, my cock throbbing into the sheets below me.

We'll deal with that, but I’m not done yet. Not even close.

“Tessa,” I say, now that her breathing isn’t quite as alarming. I slide my arms around her legs and pulling her a few inches toward me, surprising her eyes open. I look between her breasts to her face. “Can I go down on you?”

She swallows and stares at me. Her answer is a rasped, “Okay.”

I don’t move. “You don’t sound sure.”

“It’s just—” she cuts off. “Intimate.” 

“We don’t have to,” I tell her, loosening my hold, reminding myself she wanted to go slow. “I want to. But I don’t want you to feel self-conscious.” 

She shakes her head. “It’s not that. I just—I wouldn’t have asked you to do that.”

Ah. I nuzzle her stomach with my nose. “But do you want it?”

She barely hesitates before nodding. “I do.”

It’s gorgeous and intimate and hot and wet, just taking her panties off. Then I'm seeing her, and my nose to pressing into her, and she ripples with my first lick. I’m almost drowning she’s so wet. I feel like I've barely begun when she starts bucking against me and I hold as much of her down as I can, an arm curled around her thigh, a hand squeezing her breast.

“Inside me. Scott.”

My heart hiccups, then races.

Her eyes are closed. I lift over her and she writhes, wanting my touch again. Sensing me move, she stills, waiting for me to push _something_ into her. 

“Tessa, look at me.”

She does. And I’m almost undone by the open lust in them. But we need to be very, very clear.

“What do you want inside you?”

“You. Your cock. Please, Scott.”

My mouth is dry. It’d be so easy to push inside her.

I have to swallow twice to speak. “I don’t have a condom.” 

Her body is vibrating with need. She’s almost crying as she points to the bedside table. “I bought some. There.”

Relief pulses through me, because of the coming release and because she planned ahead. If she planned, this isn't a choice she's only making in the moment.

I lunge for the drawer, rip the corner of the box off with shaking hands, and roll one on.

“Are you sure?” I ask anyway.

Tessa nods, “I’m sure. I want to have sex with you.” 

I grin, flexing my cock and watching her eyes lock on it, hungry. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

She drags my hips toward her with her legs and takes my penis in her hand. I whimper, just like this morning. She squeezes the tip, pressing precum onto her fingers, and levels her huge eyes at me. “Scott Moir, stick your cock inside me and make us cum.” 

Which is, by far, the hottest thing she’s ever said.

She comes first, and the convulsion of her muscles around my cock make me follow, an explosion in which we're the spark, fuel, and flame.

Then everything stills. I'm light-headed and sweat soaked. Her breathing's alarmingly shallow. After I throw the condom away, I lay back down, listening to Tessa's giant gasps of air. We come down together, naked and in love and smiling. And for tonight, at least, our world is at peace.


	12. Tessa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and for all your comments and kudos! You've made writing this fic infinitely more fun. Thank you!

I wake up on our last morning with a sore throat, a red nose, and more sand in my eyes than ought to be physically possible. 

By the time breakfast is cleaned up and we’d recruited the kids to help us tidy the house, I’ve gargled Listerine, drank two glasses of orange juice, and popped three zinc tablets. I finish scheduling an appointment with my doctor for that afternoon while shoving one last load of towels into the dryer. 

Turning the machine on, I face Thomas for a low five. “Okay, little man,” I tell him, steering him through the kitchen, “now I need you to put every single toy into your chest in the living room.” We stop in the doorway, surveying the wreckage. “I’ll help.” 

But my voice dies out. Scott is upstairs with Emma, emptying the trashcans. One of which holds two used condoms. 

I dash up the stairs in a panic and find Emma holding the big bag open the hallway as Scott knots the bag from our bedroom. 

Scott’s eyes lock with mine and I relax. 

“What’s the matter?” Emma asks me. 

Scott winks and drops the little bag into the big one in the hall.

“Nothing,” I lie, realizing that Thomas, worried by my bolting upstairs, has followed me. I take him by the shoulder. “Just thought I forgot something. Silly me. Okay, Thomas, let’s finish up.”

We leave the house basically tidy, if not actually clean. Our bags are in the back so we can transfer them to Scott's car, which has been sitting at the airport all week waiting for Bee and Ryan to get back from Cannes. Scott is sprawled in the seat beside me, eyes closed and muttering, “Never again. Never again.”

“I know,” I tell him quietly. “This is the last time I’m ever listening to the PAW Patrol song.”

“That too.”

We’re less than a mile from the stadium when his words ring back at me.

“What did you mean?” I ask. “That we’ll never do again.”

He shifts in his seat, taking his foot off the dash and squirming back up to a seated position. “A week’s too long,” he answers, careful to keep his voice below that of the PAW Patrol. “We are never babysitting for a whole week ever again.”

As if suddenly given permission, my entire body sags. The sides of my head ache and I have to blink several times against the urge to close my eyes. 

“I agree,” I say, thankful to be pulling to a stop at a light so I can rub my eyes with both hands. "This was a lot."

Scott’s fingers brush my thigh. I lower my hand, allowing him to weave our fingers together.

“Do you want to come over tonight?” he asks. 

My heart thumps faster, I’m grinning, and I can see us on his sofa, intertwined and resting in the silence. But I feel myself hesitate. If I say yes, it’ll be the beginning of _after_. After we started dating. After the week that brought us together. After everything we’ve been to each other. A beginning.

I feel Scott’s eyes as traffic crawls forward and us with it. “I figure you’d want to go home and sleep after your doctor’s appointment. But maybe,” he pauses, his voice growing thin with uncertainty, “you’d like to come over tonight? For a little while.”

I want to reassure him, but there’s still that note of uneasiness humming in my chest. “I might be too tired to do anything,” I tell him.

“That’s okay,” he says, leaning on the console. Leaning toward me. “I just want to cuddle. And talk. And just... be with you.” His voice drops into something less hopeful and earnest. “If you want to. And aren’t too tired.”

I smile and nod. My voice sounds tiny when I say, “Okay,” but Scott hears me. He grins back, bright.

There hasn’t been a lot of time to think since last night, but in the quiet that settles between us as I pull into the potholed parking lot, I do. Puppies protect or fight fires or whatever from the back seat. (When did we start letting the kids watch so much TV? Must be the exhaustion.) It blends into a white noise that, for once, I don’t mind. 

I feel safer than I probably should, headed into public, to a skating rink, with Scott. There’s no way this is going to stay a secret. Even with private ice time, the building isn’t locked down or anything. It’s gonna get around the rink community, even if it doesn’t hit social media right away.

Do I want people to know? 

I cut the engine, startling myself, and check that I’m in the space well. Scott’s already climbed out and sliding one of the back doors open. “Okay, you puppies,” he says. “Who wants to skate?”

What if we’d forgotten the condoms in the rubbish bin until right now? Whoever emptied it, Ryan or Bee or a maid or someone, would find it and know. It’d be mortifying for people to learn that way.

I shove my bag behind the seat and tap my pocket for my phone. 

Is it embarrassing for people to know? Or just to find out in an intimate way. Or a thoughtless one. 

My pulse jumps and a sizzle of electricity moves up my scalp, dissipating at my crown. 

Emma’s hand is soon in mine and we’re walking toward the building where Scott and I skated as juniors. I guide the girl around the water-filled potholes without noticing.

The prospect isn’t terrifying. It’s kind of thrilling. Kind of exciting. Not for people to know, exactly, but for it to be fact. 

The ice smells so good. I’m humming to lace up my skates, but of course we don’t have our own skates with us. We have to rent, just like everyone else. 

As Scott walks to the slack-jawed teenager at the rental window, I test the phrase out behind my smile: Scott and I are together. 

It makes me grin more. 

“We’re introducing our friends’ kids to skating,” Scott’s telling the teenager. “Do you skate?” 

We’ll tell our families, our close friends. We can do that soon. We won’t have to wait too long.

The attendant blinks, remembering where he is, and asks for a selfie. Scott leans across the counter, smiling broadly back at me as the kid takes the picture. 

No other staff seems to be around and there aren’t many people left in the building. The final stragglers from the session before are leading dozens of balloons down the length of the atrium.

Soon, Scott is finishing Thomas’s laces—he’s unhappy with the weight of the blades—and I’m standing on the grey carpet by the rink holding Emma’s hand. The zamboni just came through. It’s my favorite time to be on the ice but I’m not itching to take off like I usually would be. I’m holding a little girl’s hand and hoping she loves this. 

The boys make their way over, and Scott pulls out his phone. 

“Hey Bee and Ryan!” he begins, waving at his phone. “I know you’ve got videos of the kids’ first steps, so here are their first steps on the ice. Okay,” he shifts to get Thomas and Emma in the shot. “Are we ready?”

Emma screams her “Yea” into the rafters. Which isn’t as hard as it would be in a normal building, since it’s all ice and concrete and old, damp carpet. But it’s still impressive and ear splitting. 

Scott steps out in front of us, giving Thomas’s hand to me, and swings around so he’s facing us with his phone. 

I swallow against the soreness in my throat and step forward. Then again. I step onto the ice, a sense of home flooding my chest as I look at the tiny feet on either side of mine. 

They keen as their feet skid away without their meaning to, and I pull up on their arms to keep them upright.

“It’s okay,” I tell them. “Let yourself slide. Just keep your feet together.”

Emma plops onto her butt before I can stop her and Thomas drops to his knees, then his butt to imitate her.

“Well,” Scott says, straightening. “Not too bad.”

By the time Bee and Ryan arrive, neither want to hold our hands as they toddle along on the ice beside us. Thomas’s tongue is sticking out, plastered to his chin on one side with excited concentration, even though I keep telling him to keep it in. He could bite it in half if he falls. He’s holding onto the wall with one hand and Scott’s jeans with the other.

Emma is making her path toward the center ice, tipping forward and catching herself with her hands every few paces.

When Scott exclaims, “Look who’s here,” both kids fall flat on their haste to get back to their parents. While they recover on the carpet, showing and exclaiming and shouting and hugging, Scott reaches for my hand. We sail around the ice, faster and faster, side by side, hip to hip. With a push of his hand, we peal off in different directions, spinning and stepping and enjoying the clean ice and the freedom.

We come back together at center ice and I pull his mouth toward mine, remembering at the last moment to kiss his cheek instead of his mouth. Just in case Scott missed whatever Thomas gave to me, I don’t want to be responsible for making him ill.

“I love you,” he whispers to me. 

I say it back, then pull away. “Let’s take a selfie.”

I feel his skepticism at my bright tone and smile but fish my phone out of my pocket anyway. 

“Just for us?” he asks as he skates behind me and sets his hands on my hips. I hold my phone out in front of us and we grin. I take a couple pics, then turn and kiss him on his cheek. 

Scott looks down. 

The moment tightens, stretches. 

Scott kisses my mouth. It’s gentle and quick and sure, unworried about my germs or my breath—damn, I forgot my toothbrush. Oh well. Not going back for it.

I'm grinning against his lips before I can stop myself and I press down with my thumb.

"I love you," I tell him.

He kisses me again.

“Let’s save that one,” I whisper, bringing my arm and phone back to my chest. “But could we post one of the others?”

His forehead creases a moment, then, “Are you sure?”

I nod. “Better get ahead of this thing.”

Beaming, Scott swishes around in front of me, squeezing me to him. 

He slides his hands to my hips again, holds me to him he flicks us backward with a push of his skate. We skate that way, backwards, until we reach the wall, then we curve.

I tuck my phone back into my pocket. I’ll upload one of the pics before we leave. Right now, I’m skating with Scott.


End file.
